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LinkedIn: The Better Option for Business

Social media platforms, while similar in many aspects, differ slightly in function, feature and fan base – yet these slight differences can and should majorly affect your marketing efforts. Indeed, LinkedIn, by virtue of its difference in purpose, is actually the better platform for businesses even in comparison to the social media platform giant, Facebook. For while Facebook may be the most popular of the social media sites, is it the most effective channel for your business needs? Facebook is often viewed by many professionals primarily as a site for more personal uses, best for connecting with friends and family. In contrast, LinkedIn is often the choice for professional purposes. Such differences in purpose accordingly affect what networks you’ll be able to tap into; many experienced professionals might not be very active on Facebook, or even use it at all for their business purposes. Moreover, the users that LinkedIn attracts are ones with the focused professional purpose of networking with other B2B companies and like-minded individuals.

Between the two networking sites there are many similarities. Both offer versions of business community platforms, known as ‘Fan Pages’ on Facebook and ‘Companies Pages’ on LinkedIn; these respective platforms allow user interaction, whether through wall postings (Fan Pages) or company recommendations and comments (Companies Pages). Both platforms also allow users to see who else among their friends or network is either ‘liking’ pages or making ‘recommendations’. However, for the serious B2B professional or company, LinkedIn strides ahead of Facebook to provide a wider range of business possibilities.

Community Building and Networking: Due to the professional atmosphere of LinkedIn, those who will end up following your LI pages will be professionals whose business interests and goals will be relevant to those of your company. The option for these professionals to recommend services or products further increases the value of their connection to you. Facebook’s ‘Like’ option gives you followers, but on LinkedIn you can amass followers who have a more specific, professional interest or relevancy to your company.

Content Control and Community Management: LinkedIn Groups offer moderation tools to help control content, with specifics on what can and cannot be posted. These moderating features are simply not present within the Facebook settings, preventing companies from effectively managing their pages. While options for Group Admins are easily accessed in LI groups, such as managing members, Facebook page administrators do not have such options readily available. These moderating features are necessary for maintaining a focused hold on page content.

Increased Presence: LinkedIn has recently changed their group settings, allowing for previously private groups, where only members could view content, to be accessed and viewed publicly. There is even the option for public-only groups, which instantly allows for increased online presence, visibility, and user interaction. By allowing their Groups to be public, LinkedIn has succeeded in evening out the advantage that Facebook Fan Pages, by always being public, had had over their Groups.

Increased Engagement: Where Facebook user discussion and interaction is stilted by character limitations in status updates, LI Groups offer more options, and more space, for users to engage with each other and your brand. Even more importantly, Groups provide an option of daily or weekly (depending on the user’s preference) digests, allowing users to see and interact with ongoing discussions over email. Facebook Fan Pages do not allow this option of digests or newsletters; interaction and engagement is thus severely limited in comparison to LI Groups.

If you’re looking to increase your business opportunities and connect with other professionals, you must look beyond Facebook and consider LinkedIn. More and more professionals are realizing the clear advantages that LinkedIn provides for networking and business relationships, particularly for the B2B company. While maintaining a presence on both Facebook is a great way to access certain social media channels, consider adding to that a presence on LinkedIn, and take advantage of the great business opportunities it can offer to you. As it has for many others, it may just turn into your preferred option for social media networking.